I guess these models assume that neither human cloning nor interstellar space travel will take off in this century. Models in 1923 probably didn't expect another world war, birth control, or the crazy levels of agriculture we see filling up our satellite pictures. How does one sanely account for such changes in these long-term models?
Or do you mean human "printing", some machine that can carry a pregnancy instead of a human doing it? I don't think there is even a glimmer of such technology on the horizon. Then again, you seem to also think that there is some imaginable chance that we'll discover interstellar travel in the next 75 years, so maybe that doesn't stop you?
One example scenario would require some narcissistic billionaire women to start producing their personal cloning machines. Production could go up to, say, an extra one of them (except for the billionaire part) each year. If that catches on, in a similar fashion to plastic surgery, we could see global fertility rates revert to Catholic levels. It also helps to think in terms of identical twins, triplets, and beyond.
Having a lot of children is now mostly limited by raising of said kids to require a lot of effort and money. It does not seem like a stretch to assume that robots could lend a hand here, at least on the 75 year horizon.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02901-1
now while this isn't nearly at the level of human cloning, it never ceases to amaze me how far we've come.
To me, the most likely consequence is to reduce the total fertility rate to one child per woman.
But the first 20 or so weeks, from conception up to viability, are an entirely different prospect and we have no idea how we could replicate them yet.
Beyond that, perhaps the models do assume that future birth rates don’t wildly depart from historical ranges. Seems a reasonable assumption to me.
But sure we could somehow get artificial wombs and an interest in using them, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Seems unlikely though.
Underpants gnomes models. Bounce-back could happen, but there is no understanding in governments of why the decline is occurring, nor what it takes to reverse it,* so it is unlikely.
* Exhorting people to return to traditional family values, as the new PM of Italy does, is likely to crash fertility faster.
Things like artificial wombs would be getting into similar territory, but unlike cloning they have justified ethical medical uses such as enabling women who can't carry a child in their own womb for any reason to still have a child.
Responsibility was just one example of the ethical quandries that arise with cloning thrown into the mix, why should we create cloned children when the state already can't do good by orphaned children? How do inheritance rights play out? What do we make of things like DNA tests as meaningful evidence in criminal cases? Who gets to have themselves cloned, and how do you prevent misuse of the technology? Is it misuse to say, store the DNA of the best soldiers, best athletes etc so as to create clones to meet demand in those areas? And if that isn't the intention for cloning, why do cloning at all instead of something like artificial wombs?
Is it worth the suffering of all the imperfect clones (and the surrogate mothers within whom they'd be grown) that will inevitably be produced during the development of the technology? How do we deal with reproductive rights of clones and their impact on genetic diversity?
Children who are raised in the foster system will typically have a harder time than those who have families which can provide financial backing, so unless the clone is raised by a family as their own child, we'd effectively be creating a subservient class by cloning, since while with normal children, losing their family is not necessarily known ahead of time, with a clone that isn't the case.
As it stands, we aren't even mature enough to have a proper conversation about the much less dangerous ethics of creating rudimentary "intelligences" in the form of current generation AI. How are we, as a society, supposed to then have a proper conversation about the ethics of creating full human intelligences? With normal children we can at least point to a biological imperative.
In general, I think genetic sequences should be open source and if we get a ton of Einsteins, Michael Jordans, etc then we’re better for it.
> why should we create cloned children when the state already can't do good by orphaned children
Same as why we have children at all, some people want to have children that are their own.
> unless the clone is raised by a family as their own child, we'd effectively be creating a subservient class by cloning, since while with normal children, losing their family is not necessarily known ahead of time, with a clone that isn't the case.
I absolutely agree that all children should be when possible with parents and clones/design babies need to be given the same care/rights/support as normal children.
> Is it worth the suffering of all the imperfect clones (and the surrogate mothers within whom they'd be grown) that will inevitably be produced during the development of the technology?
We develop it not on humans first. We then use it to design babies for parents with genetic abnormalities.
> How do we deal with reproductive rights of clones and their impact on genetic diversity?
We grant them all rights. I think there will naturally be enough diversity, and monoculture scare is less meaningful when we can breed new generations with proper adaptations. Essentially we can get almost all benefits of having a diverse genetic pool (and I do think we should financially incentivize diversity).
> How are we, as a society, supposed to then have a proper conversation about the ethics of creating full human intelligences? With normal children we can at least point to a biological imperative.
I don’t think there is any difference between normal children, cloned children, and designed children.
But yes, if by cloning you're referring to just the broad set of technologies involved like artificial wombs, rather than specifically the technology to grow an exact copy of an existing human, I agree that the ethical problems are a lot more solvable and the tech a lot more justifiable as it would be compensating for medical issues.
As for developing it with animals first, of course we would do that, but at some point it has to be tested on humans, which still involves the same risks since developmentally we are fairly different from most animals, especially when it comes to the brain.
Overall, I think society is moving towards increased atomization of family units, which may go down all the way to the individual. Ultimately, we can unbundle (1) sexual intimacy (2) friendship (3) procreation. And I think in this world procreation will likely be artificial womb with a clone of self + a few improvements.
> development […]
Honestly I suspect artificial womb to be the harder problem than genetic manipulation/cloning. As full genome sequencing becomes cheap you can fully sequence every candidate embryo and ensure it’s clean. We don’t need high yield of quality embryos if we can filter out all the genetically bad ones with essentially 100% accuracy.
If someone just wants a child identical to some other human for esthetic reasons, the ethics seem mostly ok. The biggest ethical concern here would be obtaining true consent from the person being cloned, probably.
But the typical interests in creating a clone are related to exploitation of the clone without regard to their own desires. Simple organ harvesting is a popular reason to desire a clone. More indirect forms of exploitation are also thought about, like a company creating a clone of, say, Elvis Presley to sell his image, or someone creating a clone of a dead/aging lover as an ultimate form of child grooming.
Or the somehow worse sounding prospect of someone doing this with a clone of someone who was not their lover, say Elvis.
I think anyone who wants to clone themselves is too full of shit to allowed to be cloned.
and I say this not as a jest, but as a mere point that the two markets (adoption/cloning) may not overlap.
My impression is that demographers have thought we would plateau around 9 or so billion.